


Love at first sight

by willowthorn



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Kid Fic, Modern AU, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28510983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowthorn/pseuds/willowthorn
Summary: Life comes at you fast, and then you wake up one day with a spouse, a mortgage, and a whole lot more responsibilities
Relationships: Grand Magnificent/Echo Reverie
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Love at first sight

**Author's Note:**

> Hey why not - have fun, live a little, try and figure out how to write children

He is 18 when he leaves Memorius for the first time. The city grows distant in the background, the open road ahead twisting its way to Quire across the border and cool september nights. He leaves behind his closest friends, forgets nights in the south under the stars making art to an old stereo with static-heavy feedback. He takes up smoking, quits, takes it up again. He sees his family occasionally, usually when someone dies, occasionally on holidays. The distance adds… something, but most of the time it’s more of the same if he isn’t knee deep in one of his projects.

He meets Echo in the spring. Long hair, bright eyes, and a grin that pulls on his chest even as they pull on his wrist. They’re a graffiti artist, and their work is bright and detailed and beautiful - it feels pointed, airs of older styles mixing in their thick bold lines and needle-like precision. 

They collaborate, of course - Grand would never settle for less. The studio they share is crammed with the work of five other artists, all of them mixed-medium, all of them fresh out of school, all of them trying to be the first to be invited to a proper gallery show. Grand is determined to beat them all, and he has the bruises to prove it. 

And of course, he finally does. It’s bright and vivid and Echo is by his side, looking uncomfortable in their streetwear. Grand doesn’t realize it until much later, city air and smoke in his lungs as they lean out from the balcony of his apartment together. They’ve been drinking, and Grand thought it had been in celebration. He almost feels guilty but this is everything he’s - they’ve - been working for. But it’s not really Echo’s night, it’s his, and that’s part of the problem.

The museum in Glass has each plaque written in four languages within the main gallery. The ‘traditional’ gallery, with towering works from 1750 to 1935, all fairly orthadox, all grounded in realism or impressionism. It’s beautiful, it’s towering - the vivid work of the old masters is met with those few dozen pieces that the government really likes to point to as the origin of a national movement. They can find tons of pieces that leave Grand starry-eyed and rambling about this movement or that once they move from the main gallery. He overflows with enthusiasm about texture and form and the use of natural fibers within a temporary installation set up like a free-form living room overflowing with books, a love note to culture and history and time, and Echo doesn’t register the room around them at all because they don’t want to look away from him.

The sprawling galleries to the side have works from people like them. Some have even become permanent in the time it takes for Grand to graduate. 

Echo leaves the formal art world after two years. Grand watches them leave it, leave him, and he wants to understand, but he cannot let go of the feeling of creation - the joy, the lights, the ridiculous conversations about nonsense concepts that stretched on for hours and hours. He delights in theory, in colour and texture, and he feels it all slowly drain away within three months of their departure. They’re still in contact… kind of. They can find him in the cafes they went to together, shoulders hunched towards a sketchbook. They can see him in the art supply store, staring at the canisters of spray paint no doubt remembering the exact sound of their art with three pounds of clay in one arm, raw canvas in the other. He has a bit of sawdust in his hair, and stains on his jeans. They do not speak to him if they can help it, and they both leave a little bit more hollow for the experience.

After eight months, Grand's space in the studio is left abandoned. 

They find out through a mutual friend that he’s skipped town, closed shop, disappeared into the life of a general worker. They say he works in shipping now - mindless work, moving boxes from this province to the next and back again. Echo sees his shadow in cafes, galleries, and neon lights. Grand sees them on open roads, hiding in the corner of old diners in endless wheat fields, or feels their back against his when he’s trying so hard to sleep, to not miss what he’s left behind. They throw themselves earnestly into their work, and eventually, they are able to ignore that missing piece. Echo becomes a guide, of sorts - they show other artists, still fresh and new and full of wonder how to navigate the city, how to pull themselves up onto the older building on Queen street, how to use the billboard shadows to disguise their movements until the last possible minute. They show them how to run, and they think of clay dust and coffee. Grand becomes a respected part of the team and - and that’s it. He’s just one of the crew. Dependable, yes, but he’s just a part of the line. It’s hard, in its own way, but it’s not notable, not worth complaining about either. He has a job, he does that job. And then he goes home. Alone. Echo goes home. Alone. 

And then they are together.

It’s Even and Cascabel’s wedding, the diner they now owned together dressed to the nines. They seem happy, dancing around in lopsided circles while Gig drinks perhaps too much punch with his arm around Echo’s shoulder. Tender and Fourteen-Fifteen keep on brushing hands, sharing chocolate dipped strawberries and private laughter. And Grand is sitting in the corner, with his cousin, wishing he had been able to find a proper date. 

It’s the longest night he barely remembers. His cousin leaves him - she smiles, pats his hand, and goes to dance with some skinny teen that absolutely would never deserve her. Gig, meanwhile, is busy chatting up some fancy looking guy Grand barely recognizes but thinks might be named Klarc Wellington, or Kurt Brightline, or Kalvin Clein. He’s blushing, and they’re laughing, and Grand thinks he might gag on his third (fourth?) mystery punch beverage. Echo is right there, and clearly the best looking person at this function (happy couple aside), so Grand can’t imagine why despite having his arms around Echo not five minutes earlier Gig is so obviously flirting with this other guy. A small, insular part of himself turns bitter, walks through scenarios like a jealous lover, and he doesn’t care at that moment because while it was so, so good to see Even and Cascabel falling in love all over again over the course of one night, he really just… 

He misses Echo. He misses what they had. He missed the ease with which their calloused hand would find his own. He missed burying his nose into the knots of their hair while Echo made breakfast, bleary-eyed and slightly hung over from the night before. He misses the smell of city nights and the rhythmic clunk-clunk-clunk-hiss of spray paint. He misses clay, and metal, and wood. He misses his art, he misses the scene, he misses long summer nights with Echo. He misses Echo. 

He misses Echo when they sit down next to him, too wrapped up in trying to remember the exact shade of their hair at twilight. Echo takes in the hunch of his shoulders, the lines around his eyes from too many long shifts, the furrow in his brow that he always, always gets when he’s trying to draw some work of art he had seen half a dozen years ago up through his memory and into the present moment. 

Echo sits, sips slowly on their punch, and watches him until he notices that Echo is there. He fumbles an excuse immediately - something about going to grab more punch, or going to see what his cousin is doing, or just going - as if he’s convinced that someone is forcing Echo to be around him. As if Echo isn’t reaching out to grab his wrist, to ease him back into his seat. 

“Hey, Mag.” Echo puts a gentle smile into their voice, and Grand all but melts away. 

They catch up that night, sort of. It takes a hazy half hour, and when the dancing starts again Echo reaches out a hand to drag a flushed Grand to the floor. He’s easy to read normally, but he gives Echo the best 30-40 year old man shuffle that he can manage, which makes Echo laugh, which makes him laugh. Echo catches the look Cascabel is sending them as they get their breath back, and they know what the fluttering in their chest means, and they know what the look Grand is giving them means.

But it’s late, and Grand has to get his cousin home (or she has to get him home, since she has his keys and there’s no way any of them would let him get behind the wheel). They let themselves have one more dance, slow and swaying. Grand’s breath is warm against their neck, and he mutters something like ‘I missed you’ that Echo understands more through the weight of his arms, the way his touch became so instantly familiar once he was given permission. And maybe that’s just the alcohol, maybe it’s just too many long nights for both of them, but it feels… It’s not like they’re stepping back into who they were before they left. It’s not like Grand is a whole new person - they still have a lot to talk about, a lot to set straight, a lot to ease back into. For now, in the warm glow of mason jar candles and fairy lights strung up in the cramped diner, it feels right. 

Grand doesn’t lean down to kiss Echo on the cheek, and Echo doesn’t reach up to wrap their arms around his neck, but his hand - warm, no longer calloused in the same way - squeezes theirs. They promise to get coffee together on the weekend - a new spot, right off the train tracks. Great cold brew, apparently. 

It turns out they have great breakfast sandwiches too, so it becomes an easy routine - whoever gets there first, usually Echo, saves the other a seat. They talk for a few hours about stupid things, mundane things, harder things. They talk through why Grand left, what he would do if he had his studio space back. They talk through Echo’s living situation, how their lease is almost up and they just can’t stand living with Ballad anymore. Their hands draw closer across the scratched and stained and familiar wooden table. 

One weekend Grand brings a tablet with him, sits beside Echo instead of across from them, elbows bumping as he walks Echo through the powerpoint - which he insists is not a powerpoint but a Prezi, as if there was a difference - he threw together on the pros and cons of Echo moving in. 

And fuck it, Echo agrees.

It takes weeks for Echo’s stuff to fit neatly into Grand’s space. They shift it around when he’s on longer haul, and occasionally they can hear him tripping over things as he stumbles back home. But it does become a home, eventually. They settle into a routine, settle into each other. They curl against him on the couch, put their cold feet against his shins as they scroll through whatever brainless series Grand puts on because he’s just too tired to do anything else some nights. They throw popcorn at him when he ultimately falls asleep in the middle, and it’s… nice. It’s nice, in a very calm way that they never really got to while they were officially dating. 

Grand starts making art again, when he has the time. He joins Echo when they’re making stencils, following their direction without complaint. They catch him fiddling with small things - twist ties, paperclips, some of the embroidery thread they had left lying around. They grab him some gardening wire and some playdough from the dollar store while he grabs the stuff they actually need. They say it’s because they’re sick of him touching their embroidery stuff, and they kind of are. But mostly they want to see what he’ll make. 

There’s a slowly growing pile of wire figures at the dining table just off from the living room by the end of the month, and one weekend Echo returns from a jog to the hum of a pottery wheel on the porch. They didn’t even know they had a pottery wheel. Grand smiles at them through the window when they tap on it, and there’s a smear of clay on his cheek. They feel their heart begin to race again, the towel around their shoulders suddenly too warm, the sweat between their shoulder blades itchy. So they splash water on their face, and join Grand on in the soft spring air. They bring out some grapefruit juice, pale pink, a straw poking out of Grand’s cup. The clink of ice can barely be heard over the spinning of the wheel. Echo watches Grand’s hands as condensation slides down the curves of the glass. They cross their legs, swallow, and drink him in.

Time moves slow during summer nights with him, winter feels warm with them. Grand begins selling his art again, and one good year turns into two, into three. They’ve been dating since that day in the gentle heart of spring. Echo met Grand’s parents before, of course but… This time, when they’re invited for a quiet dinner, it feels different. 

Grand, when he meets Echo’s extended family during a summer barbeque, is bullied relentlessly. Some of the young kids think his tattoos are cool, so he ends up babysitting for half the afternoon. He builds them a little city out of sticks and leaves in the sandbox, and only laughs as one of the five decides to stomp all over it, growling and howling like a mighty beast.

He complains about getting sand in his socks after, of course. 

They get married in the fall. The sky is wide and open, the mountains rusty. There are white tail deer that flick their ears at them from the side of the road. They sing together, laughing when Grand’s voice breaks over a high note, or when Echo gets tongue tied, or just because they like the sound of each other. Grand leans out the car window to take pictures when the roads seem empty.

They lean against each other and watch a river fall from between pines, eating apples and talking about nothing when they ask. They can still remember how he stilled, how his eyes widened just a bit. He had dropped his apple, but that was fine, because he said yes in such a breathless way. 

Echo is 26 and newly wed, and then 27 and working full time, and then they are sick for a week, their stomach in knots every single morning. Grand sits by them, smooths their hair back, and makes them drink so much ginger tea - something he claimed was a sure thing, because sometimes when he’s stressed enough he’ll get sick like this, his body will feel exhausted like this, and tea helps.

It’s not stress. Echo gets a blood test, and then a stick test, and then they grab several more from the drugstore on their way home from the clinic. They sit Grand down on the couch, run their hands over his shoulders to try and ease away some of the nervous tension there. He expects bad news. He expects divorce, disaster, some unpaid debt, some life changing thing. What he gets is Echo’s voice, soft, a breath taken and held before they speak. 

“Mags, I’m pregnant. It’s yours.”

“God I would hope it would be mine, I mean - what? How?” They catch him looking down, looking at their stomach, his hands still tight around their own. 

“Well, when two people love eachother very much….” Echo huffs, tension easing from their shoulders. Grand groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“You know what I mean. I thought you couldn’t - are you going to be ok? Do you…” His hand finds their own, running over tendons and muscles, warm and familiar. “Is this something that you want?”

They talk for a long time, hours sliding away. They talk all the way from the couch to the bed, Grand taking care of the nightly chores while Echo considers what to do with the spare pregnancy tests. They talk with the covers pulled up around them, moonlight seeping into the window. They talk until Echo takes Grand’s phone away so he can stop trying to look at every single parenting website at once while he thinks Echo is asleep so they can actually sleep.

Grand spends the night staring at the ceiling, and remembering a living room glowing golden in afternoon light from long ago. He remembers the voices of the adults in the kitchen, laughing together, celebrating together with a bottle of wine. He can remember his mother asking questions with a joyful curiosity. And he had been left alone, sitting on a piano bench, a small basket in the middle of the room across from him, curved. There was a bright blanket, and even then he recognized the pattern from his grandmother’s crochet hooks. He did not recognize the soft, doughy hand that stretches up and out towards the hanging stars lining the basket, but he knows those bright eyes, still remembers how the room had stilled around him as he crouched in front of her, totally still as he looked at a whole, complete person that hadn’t existed in the world not even a few months ago.

He dreams a memory and wakes wondering if he will feel the same awe at the child growing in Echo’s stomach. If his aunt would crochet a blanket for his child. If his mother would bring them wine and if his father would… He can’t really picture what his father would do, but he would be there. He was sure his father would be there. 

He breathes into the back of Echo’s neck, their soft hair tickling his nose, and brings a hesitant hand to cup their stomach, no different than it had been yesterday. 

Echo sleeps late that day, and Grand gives himself the day off to cook for them, to sit with them, to try and think through how he’d be able to get all his tools and art supplies hidden from curious fingers. 

“We’re going to need an actual house.” Grand speaks to the empty living room in the middle of looking for a lock box he could fit on the balcony, Echo poking a curious head out of the washroom to look across the apartment.

“Ok we’re going to need a townhouse at least. I’m going to have to get a mortgage.”

There are bank appointments, doctor appointments, house viewings. The first few months run by in a blur. Grand has a steady secondary income through his art and between that, his regular job, and Echo’s part-time work at the diner they can afford something decent - two bedrooms, a small yard big enough for a swing set and a cramped shed that can hold the tools Grand isn’t using. The basement houses frames and a shaky washing machine that Grand promises he’ll fix up later. Their family helps them move, and hug them so tight when they put together why they’ve gotten a second bedroom. They celebrate, of course, and that weekend when most of the boxes have been unpacked they call Grand’s family together, Grand laughing against Echo’s shoulder as his mother yells. His aunts call him one after another, even as his mother talks to Echo to ask how they’re doing, if they’re eating properly, if they need her to drive up from Memorious. She demands that they call her at every milestone, asks them to set a date for a baby shower so she can make sure that the entire week is clear. 

Echo is four months along when they give Even and Cascabel the news - their shifts don’t get cut, but they’re discouraged from bussing their own tables. They have one of the newer hires shadowing them most of the time, lifting anything that their boss deems suddenly too heavy for them. Two months later they’re mostly just taking orders, their stomach swelling behind their apron. The new hire gives them a large button with their pronouns on it to wear, and that helps a bit. 

They go to prenatal classes together, and Grand joins them for every appointment he can. They squeeze his hand as Dr. Cassander fiddles with the ultrasound machine, a small steady sound filling the room. 

They have two months left, and Grand barely sleeps. Echo isn’t sleeping well either, but at least once a week they wake to find him gone, working another coat of paint onto the walls of the nursery or slowly rocking the cradle he made just the week before, convincing himself that it needs to be redone because the motion isn’t quite smooth enough. They try to convince him that they still have time. They try to convince him that he’s still doing so well when he inevitably breaks under stress and cusses out his vape for not being a cigarette. They guide his hands to their stomach, let him feel the little life there, and remind him that right now they need him to take care of himself. More than anything they need him here, with them. They can always call their family up if they need help, or if things aren’t totally ready by the time the baby comes. 

They stumble across a name late at night, the hum of violins hazy as Echo looks out onto a rainy night, Grand snug against their back as he fails to read the submission guidelines for a sculpture show happening in four months the next town over. They play music for their child, wide-reaching and joyful. They think of the swelling of arias, the tremble of an alto’s voice. They think of fingers resting with a practiced gentleness over strings, the flutter of sheet music and carefully timed breath of a song about to begin. That’s not quite what they want, but it’s a lovely sentiment. They think through their family names, and they take the headphones off their stomach slowly.

“Hey baby, what do you think about being named Orchestra?” They feel Grand move behind them, feel the warmth and weight of his hand over their own, waiting to feel the press of a small hand against their palms. It doesn’t come then, not right away, but for the next week they have the floating songs full of life played by many hands stuck in their head, so that must mean something.

“I think they’re trying to tell you they like it, same way they told you that they like strawberries.” Grand says over breakfast, pouring water over freshly ground beans. Echo hates and loves that smell right now, leaning back in their chair with a cup of herbal tea. 

“You think?” They shift, setting their cup aside as they beckon Grand over to place his hands along their own on the curve of their stomach. He kneels before them, kissing them before he does so. “Ok baby, I know you’re up. Do you like the name Orchestra?” 

“We could call them Kes for short.” Grand leans his head against this stomach, tapping gently to let the kid know that he’s there too. “Hey there baby Kes…” 

Grand gets a kick to his cheek, Echo laughing in the warm morning light.

Grand opts to go on paternity leave two weeks later, Echo’s stomach long since swollen to the point where they couldn’t see their feet. It’s a relief, getting to kick him out of bed to get them something from the corner store without feeling too guilty. It’s a relief to have him take his time in the morning, to let himself think through his projects rather than stressing on them. He traces soothing circles on their back in the morning, and helps them stretch in the warm summer air.

June slips slowly away, the longest day of the year slipping below the horizon. Grand walks beside them, slowly, as they move around the kitchen. The movement helps their cramps, usually. Usually they come once, twice, three times and they can go back to their day. Dinner sits cooling in the pots on the stove, the call made as the last bit of twilight fades from the sky.

The next few hours are a blur of pain and doctors, and Grand sitting beside them, or behind them, trying whatever he could to help soothe their strained and tired muscles. It helps and doesn’t, and Echo hurts more than they ever had in their entire life, until they all of a sudden it’s over, a great pressure removed from their insides.

Soft morning light eases its way through the curtains when they realize they have a small human resting on their chest. Grand’s warmth is beside them, leaning against them to pull their tangled hair away from their neck. Their child is resting easy, peaceful now that the shock of being in the world has passed for the moment. 

They watch them grow. 

The first few nights are sleepless, once they’re able to return home. Grand cooks, and cleans, and neither of them want to leave Kes alone for long, even when they aren’t crying. When their eyes open, Grand stares at them as if he is in love, as if he finally found that one joyous, momentous thing he was chasing through his art all these years. 

“They’re beautiful.” He says to Echo one day, a small hand curling tightly around his index fingers. Their baby chews on his hand, drooling. 

The first few months blur - one second Orchestra feels impossibly small in their arms, the next they are heavy with a head full of hair as they pull on Echo’s own. One day it’s the three of them, curled together on the floor while Kes reaches up to grab their faces, the next they’re following them as they toddle around Even’s house, moving far too quickly on legs that barely supported them five months ago. 

Too soon they are unwrapping their birthday presents on their own, grinning ear to ear as they hug a bear Echo’s mother made. They call it their favourite plush and clutch it to their chest. For the next five years they drag it behind them, or carry it on their shoulders the same way Grand and Echo carry them, or hug it in their arms as they watch the world around them. At that time, it was nearly as big as they were. Grand took pictures of it all, of course - their wide smile, the way they kept their bear propped up beside them as they focused, far too serious for someone so small as they carefully stacked the shapes he had tooled for them into purposefully precarious stacks. He takes pictures of them crouched on the green next to a river bank, big sun hat tipped back as they look down at a wayward frog, the bear gathering mud by their feet. He takes pictures of them asleep together, hair loose from their braid, one shiny hair tie still stubbornly holding on in Orchestra’s own hair. Their hair has nearly the exact same colour tone in the morning light. That colour finds its echo in Grand’s works through the past five years. 

Echo takes pictures of Grand fixing their hair in the morning, matching clips in his own hair, placed carefully by tiny hands. They take a picture of them reading together, Orchestra’s mouth open and eyes on the page of a small square book, Grand looking softly down at them, his arm supportive around them. They have a picture of them all together, all dressed in their best - Grand and Echo in suits, Kes in a sparkling little dress with shiny black shoes and a bowtie, a poster advertising Grand’s work in the back. They have another, low light making the image blurry, of Kes looking down at some art critic from Grand’s shoulders. 

There’s one of them drawing at the base of one of Grand’s statues in his workshop, crayons marking the white marble behind them. Grand points to this as one of his most important collaborative works, and adds their name to the gallery beside his own. 

There’s a picture from Kes’ first day of kindergarten - Grand has a watery smile, Kes’ red back backpack collapsed near their legs, yellow bandages on their legs from them scraping their knees while learning to ride their bike without training wheels - Echo is sure they’ll be a master in the next month. Echo hugs them close, and promises they’ll both be there to pick them up. Kes has masters riding their bike in the next week.

Soon enough the things they draw in the classroom, away from either of them, make their way onto the fridge and into Grand’s studio as inspiration - they choose bright, bold colours, and while they still flip their assigned colouring over to draw something totally new on the back instead, Grand always says that they’re some of the best pieces he ever saw. 

They frame a drawing of the three of them together, their house a wire frame in the background, the sun smiling down on their joined hands. Grand’s tattoos are scribbles floating around his arms. 

They were not parents when they started this - long nights ago, faded with memory but still bubbling with sore words of doubt, of fear, of hesitation - but they come to fit their role, grow into the new shape of their life. Grand feels, with a confidence that would have been unbecoming to a younger version of himself, that he is truly, honestly doing something - no matter how Kes cries, no matter how they question and fuss, and stare with new found hesitance between two isles that they will grow up to be a kind and loving person. More like Echo and less like him.

He still thinks back to his cousin, sitting in the golden light of his memory, her eyes memorizing him as he memorized her. It hadn’t felt like that after all. The little hand had reached out this time, and when he looked down a small hand, so much bigger than before, wraps around his own as they walk down the aisles of the art supply store. They have new pastels in their hands.

There was a time when he was young where he watched over his Grandfather’s shoulder as he took a sketch, a frame of an old volkswagen, and breathed life and dimension into it. He created the illusion of shine with pencil, an airy freedom found in metal, in careful pastel work. 

He’s sure that he has those pastels somewhere. He took them to university and never used them. 

That night Echo sees them scrubbing pastel off their hands, two new pictures pinned to the fridge. 

Orchestra is seven years old and likes to chase boys up trees, and likes it when girls invite them to play dress-up. There are other kids like them now in their school, and they’re always the best to play with but they don’t live on the same block as them. They like to play four-square, hang upside-down on the monkey bars, and the smell of their dad’s studio. They like the gross squish of clay under their fingers, and the soft of a frog’s stomach. They love their family, and snapdragons, and when they get to go to the zoo.

They don’t like that Gogo has been sick for a little. They can hear them throwing up sometimes, and they don’t like the smell of certain things anymore. It frustrates them, because they know their parents are keeping something from them. So when they sit down together in the living room, they bring the old stuffed bear, patched and love-worn with them. Not because they’re still little enough to need it, but because… Well, they might be in trouble, like they had been when they punched a kid for pulling on their braids. So having someone in their corner helps, even if Dad and Gogo said they understood. 

They feel small, sitting there when Dad starts talking about responsibility, and how they’re both so proud of Kes for knowing how to help in the kitchen already. They watch his hands move in the same way they did when he was trying to explain something very detailed about a work to someone Kes didn’t care about, and they scrunch their face trying to follow because he’s very obviously not talking about something they did, but something they need to do for a reason they don’t understand. 

They don’t understand it until Gogo takes their smaller hands in their own, brushing over knuckles with their thumb.

“Kes, do you want to be a big sibling? It’s going to be a lot of work - Dad and I were tired a lot when we had you, so we’ll want you to help out more around the house.” They look at their parents, wide eyed as they think about having someone as small as the neighbour’s puppy to look after. As they think about getting to show them how to read, how to run, where the best place to hide in hide-and-seek was. They would show them bugs, and how to choose the best crayons in the box. They would show them all the important things that their parents forgot sometimes, and some things Kes was sure neither of them even knew about. 

Kes only has to pretend to think about it for a bit before they smile, nodding.

“I would like one sister and one brother, please.” 

“We’ll see what we can do, bud - we won’t know if they’re a bother or a sister until they tell us.” Dad’s hand is in their hair, ruffling their hair into a nest. He seems happy, and Gogo does too. 

Of course, they forget about it for a while. They have important things to do, every day, like help Dad with his art projects, or Gogo finding a house with one more bedroom and a very good climbing tree in the backyard, or figure out how to make their simple stitches in a tight, even row, which was very hard with the plastic needle that had been provided in the kit - they want to use some of Gogo’s needles instead, because they know the soft felt will hold together better if they do. They promised to use at least three thimbles, but even then Gogo said they had to get a straight line with the practice needle first.

So yes, very busy.

Eventually it gets boring no matter how busy they are, waiting to be an older sibling - Gogo’s stomach gets bigger, so they can’t play with them in the same way anymore, and Dad is more distant, too busy trying to get everything ready. Gogo lets Kes speak to their siblings now, at least, because they say they finally are big enough to hear. Orchestra tells them to hurry up, to stop making Dad and Gogo so stressed and tired. There’s two of them, and they move sometimes when Kes is looking, so they must want to come out soon - it would be cramped in there, Kes thinks.

Uncle Ballad makes bad sandwiches but very good pancakes, Kes discovers during the long days where their uncle babysits them while Dad and Gogo are at the hospital for check ups.

The twins are born late in the year, red leaves trembling overhead. Kes gets some time off school, when their parents both can come back from the hospital with two children curled in Gogo’s arms, Grand’s arm supporting them in turn.

That afternoon, Kes stares down at them in their cribs, and memorizes every twitch they make in the warm golden light of day.

**Author's Note:**

> The kids are from a long running au that Muna and Annie have. It has many different versions, and was delightful to contribute to. This fic was requested for Muna by Annie. If you have a fic you wish to see from me, please reach out to me to discuss details


End file.
